Cuchi Time: Turkeys at Dusk

I've been waiting for weeks -- weeks! -- for the opportunity to photograph these local wild turkeys. I first heard about them in early July, when my visiting parents saw them walking up my street one morning. A couple of weeks later, Roscoe and I ran into them two blocks from the house on a walk around the neighborhood. It was creepy yet fascinating: when I first saw them, I thought they were plastic yard statues. Even though there were twenty of them. TWENTY. I stood staring for a couple of minutes before my neighbor cracked open her front door to warn me that yes, they were real, and, yes, they moved in unison like horrible feathered dinosaurs. Since then, I've occasionally glimpsed their ghostly, weird turkey silhouettes slowly passing just beyond the front yard fence, but never had enough time to grab the camera. 

Over the weekend, I finally had the opportunity to take some photos when they flew onto our roof and invaded our yard. Flew onto our roof and invaded our yard.

A few caveats:

These photos don't do the turkeys justice. One: they look a lot smaller than they really are. The males were pretty humongous, at least twenty pounds, the hens only a little smaller. Two: they blend in with the scenery all too well (I guess that's the point). Three: there were so many of them, it was impossible to capture them all in the same photograph frame.

Would you have noticed the two turkeys in the oak tree over the studio if I hadn't pointed them out?
I don't think I would have. 

Having these wild turkeys flock in the yard was simultaneously awesome -- cuchi! -- and actually kind of scary. We kept Roscoe inside the house as a precautionary measure, and tried to wait them out. They spent a good hour making their rounds through the front yard, scratching and pecking in the lawn and garden beds. I eventually started to get worried that they'd completely rip up the garden and stood at the front door clapping and yelling at them until they moseyed on over to the fence and flew over it.

I see nine turkeys in this photo. There were at least five more on the other side of the hammock.
(I took this photo through my bedroom window because I'm a SCAREDY CAT)

I would be lying if I said that were the only thing I was worried about. They made me nervous, duh. Don't laugh! If they were a hoard of raccoons or skunks, anyone would have freaked. Just because they're poultry doesn't mean they aren't a threat, especially in large numbers. Have you heard of the horrible Martha's Vineyard Tom Turkey case?* Don't you remember The Birds? (I'm only a little bit joking here) These two avian horror stories spliced and bounced around in my brain the entire time they were creepily pecking and scratching away in my yard. I was relieved that I didn't have to actually chase them out of the yard, though now I have to worry about whether or not my neighbors are feeding them -- one more thing to be a crazy old lady about!

Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963)

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* The This American Life episode on which I originally heard the story, "Poultry Slam 2011", is fantastic and funny. Listen to it here.

Auspicious Visit

It's been a crazy ass week. I had my interview on Monday and suffered through intense angst (ANGST) until I heard back on Wednesday (I got the job, SURPRISE!*), culminating in a total energy crash and strange and unwarranted general malaise the following morning. It's a good thing Lisa and Mark were driving down for a visit from the East Bay -- and that they had thought to surprise me by secretly bringing along Alana, who I hadn't seen in a year? In over a year? In any case: my general malaise disappeared tout de suite.

This super tall silvery, velvety shrub/tree elicited screams. SCREAMS.

What a wonderful, wonderful surprise. I got to celebrate the new job, my birthday (and Lisa's!) with some of my most favorite people. This birthday feels like a milestone for me -- I'm entering a new stage in my teaching career, which is allowing me to save and prepare for some big, "adult" expenses** -- and I can't think of any other people I would rather be spending it with, even if belatedly.

Touched it. 

Friday we drove up to campus, I signed some forms at HR, and we visited the UCSC Arboretum. In all my years affiliated with the university (first as a student, now as a lecturer), I'd never been to the arboretum. What a shame that it's taken me so long to visit; it's absolutely gorgeous. We wandered from garden to garden, talking about politics and power (a conversation started the night before at a taqueria that continued for the entirety of the visit), touching absolutely everything we came across. Every bush, every flower, every tree, every pinecone. We touched everything. And it was worth the $5 entry fee, well worth it. It was even worth the mild sunburn (and corresponding, mild crankiness) I developed later on.

Touching it. 

These are a couple of the few snapshots taken early in our walk. I didn't take down any notes on the plants I photographed, but I do remember that they were all located in the Australia/New Zealand gardens.

We stumbled upon a huge flock? crew? gaggle? of California quail on the way out, but I was too busy watching them roadrun away from us to take out my camera. No reason to become inordinately upset; I have a wonderful Super Cuchi post (of the avian persuasion) to share tomorrow regardless.

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* Thanks for the woo-woo, by the way. It absolutely worked!
** Okay, I'll tell you: it's a car, I'm saving up for a new car. Don't tell the Little Green Car, it'll become horribly jealous and stop working just to teach me a lesson. You think I kid, how little you know!

Walking with Mr. Coe: Old County Road

Things have been quiet on the blog since we left Santa Cruz for (what was to be) a quick family visit at the beginning of August. As mentioned in my last post, we drove down to LA for the Mars Science Lab landing. That was two weeks ago. Jason came back up to Santa Cruz on his own a couple of days later, and Roscoe and I ended up hanging out for a week and a half longer, enjoying the perks of staying with Mom and Dad (excellent home-cooked meals, clean and comfy house, air-conditioning, LA museums and restaurants, local hiking trails, etc. etc. etc.). It was wonderful, and we very well may have stayed on for another week (and a half?) if it weren't for a surprise email offering a last-minute job interview. That got us back up here super quick. More on that later. 

Before leaving for LA, though, Roscoe and I took a final early morning walk in our little mountain town. We usually walk in our immediate neighborhood, and along our beloved Love Creek Road, but that morning I took us across the San Lorenzo River and into the neighborhood carved into the side of Ben Lomond Mountain. We walked up from highway 9 and took a left onto (the) Old County Road.

You get to walk through a pretty, little residential neighborhood for the first bit, but as the road winds around the mountain up above the river, you pass through a dense patch of vegetation. And then you get to walk over this awesome and wonderful redwood bridge, over a gully with a creek feeding into the river. It's pretty scary, actually. The bridge is old, and has enormous redwood slabs that are weathered and cracked and have big (okay, not so big) gaps between them. Because I'm an old person with old person vertigo (I know), I have to walk down the center of the bridge because if I get too close to the railing (that doesn't even come up to my waist) I feel like I'm about to lose total control of my body and throw myself head-first over the railing like an insane woman. VERTIGO. But I just walk down the center and remind myself that the people who live up Brooks Road drive their trucks and cars on the bridge daily and that, just like Lucille Two in Arrested Development, "we're okay, we're okay." 

What does that sign mean? Can you really drive an 11 ton big-rig over this bridge?
Why bother with the 6 ton limit for the smaller truck? Why why why?

Once you make it over the terrifying bridge, you're met with this lovely gate and signage. The neighborhood watch sign is new. A couple of times, Roscoe and I have walked beyond the ominous gate, but we never make it very far. Maps show that Old County Road continues, carved into Ben Lomond Mt., high above the San Lorenzo River, for a bit longer before crossing the river and meeting back up with Highway 9, still within the town limits. In reality, though, who really knows (certainly not us because I'm a rule-following, vertigo-inflicted old lady): rock and mud slides have made a mess of the old abandoned road and I always feel like I'm being watched by mountain lions and werewolves from the fallen tree trunks and boulders up above. Maybe I'll bring a friend along and really give it a try, until then, Roscoe and I turn around to go back down the mountain at this point.

The aforementioned Brooks Road continues up the mountain to the left of the ominous gate.

Re-crossing the redwood bridge on the way back home. 

In weekend update news: today is my birthday; I'm currently sitting in front of my laptop with a shower cap on over a deep-moisturizing treatment for my hair; I'm preparing for the aforementioned interview for the teaching job that I have tomorrow, Emily will be mock-interviewing me sometime this afternoon; Jason and I will go downtown for a fancy dinner of my choice this evening (don't get too excited because I'll probably end up deciding on a cheeseburger at Betty's -- but then I WILL insist on going to a movie), and then I'll go to bed nice and early so I can get up with plenty of time tomorrow morning to GET IN THE ZONE. 

I wrote Lisa an email last Thursday telling her about this interview, asking her to think woo-woo thoughts for me the day of. She replied that she was going to "woowoo all over that shit" and it made me very happy. Perhaps you'll woo-woo, too?* I JUST BROKE MY BRAIN.

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* I think it's hilarious that Deepak Chopra wrote a snarky little article defending woo-woo for the Huffington Post in 2009. Yes, I just found it when I googled woo-woo, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY. 

Getting Weird with David Bowie

And nostalgic, and maybe even a little bit weepy, too. Remember sitting on the floor of your bedroom and listening to "Life on Mars?" while cutting and pasting bits and pieces of things together for your 'zine? And it was a track on the b side of a mix tape? Cassette tape? And you knew you'd only damage the tape if you were to rewind and listen again and rewind and listen again, so you would flip the tape, listen to a Smiths song, and then flip it back again? And you were fifteen years old? Of course you do!

I woke up listening to David Bowie's "Life on Mars?" for the first time in a very long time Sunday morning. My dad had put it on in the living room while preparing breakfast. He's a Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech employee and member of the Mars Science Lab team; Sunday was, of course, the day of the rover's landing on Mars, and Jason, Roscoe, and I had driven down to LA the day before to be there with the rest of the family for the big event. Gushing about my dad's super important and awesome role in the team would compromise the certain level of anonymity I like to maintain on this here blog, so suffice it to say I'm incredibly proud of my dad and his team's accomplishments. Here's a little Bowie for them; their rover, Curiosity (aka Johnny 5); and the decades of technological and scientific advancements their mission will (continue to) give us. Bowie salutes you as you take us five million steps closer to answering his question!

Shulie Photographs Love Creek

My (good-natured) passive aggressive berating in my last post inspired Shulie to finally go through all the photos she took on our excursion up Love Creek from a couple of weeks ago, and she's posted a select few on her photography blog.

Photograph by Shulamit Seidler-Feller, source.

I've made mention of a certain memorial up Love Creek Road in the past. I want to write about it myself in the (near!) future, but Shulie's beat me to the punch, and has some really lovely things to say about it in her own post that are worth reading. I highly recommend that you go check out Shulie's post on Love Creek -- and the rest of her blog, too!

Thank you, Shulie, the photos are beautiful!